Back in the saddle

-
After a week grinding away at work, it was time for some rejuvenation with springlike weather, blue skies, and fabulous footing! Crazy but true, we were one of the only ones out.


We were supposed to only go out for a little hour. But it was just so beautiful with a light dusting of fresh snow that we stayed out for nearly 2 hours!! And, my toes weren’t cold!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gloomy November

-
Image
I feel like I am in good company when I say that life and work has taken me away from riding these last few weeks. I finally made it back to the barn during an epic windstorm with over 1,000,000 homes without power. No surprise that I didnt ride that day. I did make it out to the woods yesterday for my first time in two weeks and boy has the scenery changed. From golden colors to barren trees, from sandy trails to muddy bogs, from blue skies to hail storms. It’s time to be well dressed, with jackets, gloves, and good socks. I have been dutifully practicing the long reins every day for 15 minutes, and Q is a quick study. We now do nice transitions between collected walk to collected trot, and during one of our teardrop turns Q offered me a leg yield to my squeal and delight. He stopped and raised his head to me, saying that if I was going to squeal that much he deserved a mint. I obliged. He also taught me a lesson today. Yesterday, I was doing our standard trick at the fri
Read more

Riding English or Western? Which is safer?

-
Image
We had another trail accident this week, the fourth this season, that required an ambulance. All four accidents involved solo riders in English tack. Our club facebook posts were all atwitter about the safety of English vs Western tack. As an amateur rider having spent equal amounts of time in both types of tack under similar conditions, I feel reasonably confident in my perspective. Western tack is safer.  The saddle fork on a western saddle (also on an iberian, australian, and some endurance saddles) blocks a certain amount of the centrifugal force that comes with a sharp spook, hard buck, abrupt turn or stumbling horse. The stirrup leathers provide more stability and it is more difficult to get your foot caught in the stirrup during a fall. However, the bulk and heft of a western saddle can also make a wreck worse, such as riders getting bucked onto the neck and caught in front of the saddle, horse and rider falling and getting pinned under the saddle, boot stuck in stirrup with no
Read more

Happy 8th Birthday Mon Amour!

-
Image
Annual Trail Rides: 50/200 A nice time to hit our 25% trail objective. We finally got access to the trails (walking only) and it has been absolutely delightful. Ive also been using these slower rides to be social and go out with boarder friends, and that also has been delightful! Q was a delight on our first time out, as steady as an old cow pony. But yesterday on the way home he reminded me that the dragon needs tending. Navigating through icy patches between trees where the obvious path for Q is to hug the trees where the ice has melted, but that means my knees go knocking into the bark. So I picked up the reins to navigate better and he got fired up. All of a sudden his sides were on fire, and any heat from my leg prompted him into a trot. Which is not what you want on slick ice. So I stopped him. And we would start all over again. This happened 12 times on the last 1 km stretch home. Not fun. After some reflection, I realized that we were in a 12 rabbit situation. Being Florida-bre
Read more

Pocketful of mints, aka the slowroll

-
Image
It has been over twenty-five years since I did a solo trail ride bareback. Today was the day. Q was amazing, and gave me the confidence to ride on the buckle most of the way. When we came up to a road crossing, I got nervous because I could hear an unseen car climbing the road and was afraid it was the roadster sans muffler that had been gunning it up and down the road earlier. So I asked Q to trot, and he steadily complied with the smoothest transitions. Comfy and confident! The last time I had done this was with my first QH Rocky that I moved from Canada to Costa Rica (in the winter - bad idea) to live on the Pacific Ocean with me. We would go ride on the beach and in the ocean and bareback was the way to go. It was mostly walking around and I honestly don’t remember galloping bareback since my poney days as a teenager. Of course my new best friends bareback pad is amazing. It provides a little cushion, gives a stickiness to my seat with the suede-like top and adheres to Q
Read more

Ouch says the ground

-
Image
Zoom, zoom ... ouch. Finally one of the coolest days is here. Sunny, blue skies, low humidity and temps in mid-twenties. Perfect riding weather. Particularly after our surprise storm on Wednesday that left tons of debris and fallen trees and branches on the trails. Surprise storm brewing a few days ago. Within a few minutes, there were huge circular gusts of wind, almost like a Tornado. The next day volunteer crews were out removing the fallen trees. But some trails still have significant debris. I was heading out with trail buddy C and her azteca mare to explore section 5. I told her I needed some media for my summer challenge. She was happy to oblige not quite knowing what other objectives I had in mind. Most of the trail was lovely and I even tackled the jump trail, with a series of cross-country log jumps, for the first time. Q was just simply amazing, leading sometimes or in the back sometimes. The two horses have a trot that is simply in s
Read more